You’ve taken great care in preparing your job application, secured an interview for a position you shamelessly desire and now – deep into that meeting you hope will convince the HR manager of your qualifications – you’ve finally allowed yourself to relax.

Everything is going according to plan. You have spent hours researching the company in order to ask the right questions. Its place in the industry, its leadership, its strategy moving forward in an ever-changing market—nothing has gotten by you.

In speaking of yourself you have played up your strengths, explained away perceived weaknesses, discussed at length past projects and how lessons learned from them could be refocused to behoove your next employer; and done so without the slightest hint of arrogance or conceit. That you’ll be made an offer is a foregone conclusion, you think, allowing your lips to curl into a slight smile as you stroke the cuff of your newly dry-cleaned blazer.

Your interviewer – your mark – sits awkwardly, rocking back and forth as if trying to achieve a specific but unattainable comfort. She leans back uneasily and comes to rest, her mouth forming a pensive frown, before asking:

It can come out of nowhere—that one zinger of a question at a job interview that stumps you with its ridiculousness. Perhaps it’s too personal, or even impossible to answer, maybe it seems irrelevant… Still, it’s a job interview; you have to take it seriously, dig deep and provide an answer.

Employers sometimes put odd questions to prospective employees. Sometimes it’s to get to know the real them behind the neatly manicured persona, other times to get a job candidate out of his or her comfort zone. Bizarre questions can even be a tactic to see how a job seeker thinks about a problem.

Every year the jobs and career marketplace, Glassdoor, sifts through the hundreds of thousands of job interview questions its visitors share and forms a list of the strangest. We assembled those questions in a slideshow (see above) as well as an in-depth analysis printed below. Susan Underwood, Glassdoor Head of Global Recruiting and Talent Acquisition, was nice enough to explain the meaning behind these odd questions and how they can actually give you an opportunity to impress in a job interview. Enjoy!